The journey to another planet is a challenge on a scale that humanity has never faced before. Is it even worth carrying out, and if so, what will be the challenges the passengers will face?
This article is taken from the show's script.Making history!', a bi-weekly podcast about the history of science and technology
In this article we will deal with journeys to the distant stars, beyond the limits of our solar system.
But before we move on to talk about the challenges humanity faces in making these journeys a reality, it's worth dwelling on an important question: why make this journey at all? What's the point? What are we to look for in these little points of light we see in the sky every night?
The first reason is backup. Our Earth is a pleasant environment for humans: the temperatures are usually comfortable, the air pressure is suitable for our lungs, the gravity is reasonable. But sometimes there are periods when the earth stops being so pleasant, and then... there is nowhere to run. The earth stopped being kind to dinosaurs about sixty-five million years ago, and the dinosaurs had nowhere to run. They are extinct. If you think that such a catastrophic event is rare, maybe even a one-off - think again. In the last five hundred and fifty million years, at least five mass extinctions have occurred on Earth.
There is not a single planet or moon in our solar system that is suitable for humans, and it would take enormous and unimaginable efforts to make one of them a place where humans can exist in the same level of comfort that we are used to on our mother planet.
The journey to another planet is a challenge on a scale that humanity has never faced before. Long journeys were quite common in early times - especially in the heyday of the Spanish and Portuguese empires - but even the most extended and daring voyages of the explorers are like a trip to the grocery store compared to a spaceship flight beyond the borders of the solar system. Ferdinand Magellan took two hundred and forty sailors with him on three ships on a voyage around the world in the 16th century, and only fifty of them survived the hardships on the way. Famine, terrible diseases, mutiny on the ship, storms and storms wiped out the Portuguese one by one. Magellan himself was killed during the journey in a battle in the Philippines, along with several dozen of his men. And yet, despite the terrible difficulties of such a journey, Magellan had privileges that future astronauts would not have: there are no islands on the way to the stars where you can stop and stock up on supplies, and those who embarked on the journey could never, but never, return to Earth.
What difficulties, then, await those who plan to undertake the long journey?
The first problem is funding. A project of this magnitude could cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Even at the current dollar rate, this is a huge expense, almost as much as the price of a one and a half bedroom apartment in Tel Aviv. As of today, no government in the world has a financial interest in investing in a journey to the stars. Moreover, technology advances year by year at a dizzying pace. If we launch a spaceship tomorrow, there is a reasonable chance that the spaceship launched by the next generation will be faster than it, will overtake it and reach the destination before it. In such a state of affairs, no one has a reason to take on such an ambitious project - except perhaps metal thieves who would want to wait for Viger in Proxima Centauri, dismantle it and sell it to the Chinese.
But even highly motivated metal thieves will encounter difficult challenges.
If we succeed in building a spacecraft that is capable of flying at a speed close to the speed of light, the flight may be shortened from thousands of years to only tens of years. Although there are stars that are only a few light years away, I put the lower limit at 'tens of years' because acceleration to the speed of light takes years. The deceleration and braking from the speed of light is also a long story.
Even if we assume that our metal thieves are ready to embark on a twenty-thirty-year journey at a speed close to the speed of light, their problems have not been solved. A spacecraft traveling at the speed of light is almost completely blind: it is impossible to use the radar, for example, to discover dangerous asteroids, since the electromagnetic rays of the radar also travel at the speed of light. The spacecraft and the radar beams will meet the asteroid at more or less the same time. A sophisticated autopilot computer won't help here: the electrical signals inside the computer travel by themselves at most the speed of light, and it won't even have time to blink before the collision either.
Even if we succeed, by luck, in discovering a dangerous object on the way - in such a fast spacecraft it is impossible to change direction: the inertia that such a fast body accumulates is tremendous. Think of a train racing along the tracks at a speed of one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour, and you will begin to get an idea of the magnitude of the problem.
Slower and more controlled flight presents us with its own problems.
Humans have minimal survival requirements. Even if we populate the spacecraft with foreign workers from Thailand and Africa, we still have to provide them with a reasonable atmosphere, food and drink for the trip. There is no practical possibility to store food in a spaceship that will last for hundreds of years, and therefore it will be necessary to resort to different recycling methods. The machines that will do the recycling will have to be reliable above and beyond any machine or mechanical device invented by man so far, including Japanese cars. Every oxygen molecule that escapes into space and every drop of water that evaporates are priceless and irreplaceable. Another problem is the cosmic rays which pose a serious threat to the lives of the passengers on the ship. Cosmic rays are particles moving at high speed, such as protons ejected from a distant supernova. The Earth's magnetic field shields us from much of these rays, but a spacecraft would be completely exposed unless expensive and complicated defenses were installed. The cosmic rays damage our DNA molecules and create cancer cells and dangerous mutations.
Mental health is also at risk when it comes to a journey of decades. It is a well-known fact that people do not get along well with each other under conditions of pressure and crowding for a long time. In the early nineties, an experiment called 'Biosphere 2' was conducted in the United States. The purpose of the experiment was to test the possibility of creating a completely closed and autonomous environment, like the one expected to be on a long journey to the stars. Seven crew members entered a sealed structure and existed there for several months independent of the outside world: they grew their own food, recycled the water and air, and so on. Over time there were equipment breakdowns and problems with recycling, but their biggest problem was actually the social problem. Within a few months, disagreements emerged about how the experiment was to be conducted, the crew split into two conflicting camps, and even people who had once been good friends stopped talking to each other. In the end, one of the groups opened the doors of the building, air from outside entered the biosphere and the experiment was effectively over.
After going through all the problems, let's describe some of the possible solutions for a long journey to the stars.
Robotic ships are one of the first and most obvious ideas when it comes to long-distance spaceflight. In fact, we have been using this method for a long time: all spacecraft sent from Earth to other planets were unmanned, and Mars is inhabited by the robots Spirit and Opportunity.
The robots that will populate the ships to the stars can be turned off and dormant throughout the journey, until reaching the destination. The use of robotic ships is a practical but limited solution. It allows us to explore the distant stars (up to the limits of the robots' artificial intelligence) but it does not allow us to reach the stars ourselves and thus does not solve the problem of backing up the future of humanity in the event of a global disaster.
Freezing is another solution that has positive potential. With this method, the spacecraft sent is populated with hundreds and thousands of passengers who are all sedated and frozen until they arrive at the destination planet where they will be thawed and brought back to life. Many scientists today are trying to find ways to freeze animals for long periods, and they take an example from animals that have a long winter sleep as a matter of routine for them, such as bears. As of today, scientists have been able to freeze and bring back to life small animals such as dogs, rats and mice for short periods only, but research in the field is only in its infancy.
Freezing (aka, 'cryonics') is one of the favorite methods of science fiction writers to solve the problem of long journeys, but they are also aware of its possible drawbacks. Here too, the reliability of the equipment is of crucial importance. In the film 'A Space Odyssey 2001' by director Stanley Kubrick, it is also based on a story by Arthur C. Clark the Great, five astronauts are sent to the planet Jupiter and three of them are frozen. The spaceship's computer, the Hal 9000, is going crazy. He maneuvers the other two astronauts, Dave Bowman and Frank Paul, out of the spacecraft for a spacewalk, then murders the three sleeping crew members. This scenario is a little extreme, of course, but when it comes to sensitive electronic equipment that should work for hundreds of years continuously, there is no room for error.
It is interesting to note that Woody Allen also used freezing in one of his films, but not for a journey to the stars. In the movie 'Sleeper', Miles Monroe goes in for a simple ulcer surgery and comes out of it two hundred years later. The future, according to Woody Allen, contains amazing inventions like the 'orgasmatron' and bananas that grow to the size of a canoe. On the other hand, there are things that don't change - two-hundred-year-old Beetle cars still drive on the first stroke.
Freezing, however, is not a simple matter. As I described in the chapter on the technology of death, the liquid in the cells cannot simply be turned into ice because it expands and bursts the cell walls. The techniques being tested today to perform freezing include minor inconveniences such as emptying all the blood from the body.
An alternative to freezing may be a 'ship of generations'. Several hundred passengers will live in the Dorot ship, who will be engaged in the daily operations of research and maintenance of the spaceship. Over the years, children will be born to the passengers, and these children will grow up and be educated in the spaceship. The knowledge required to manage the spaceship and eventually to settle in the new world will be passed down from generation to generation until the end of the journey.
This solution has a clear disadvantage that I mentioned earlier and that is the challenge of creating the technological envelope that will preserve the lives of so many people for so many years. Another and slightly less obvious difficulty is maintaining the stability of the genetic code of the ship's passengers. Naturally, living in a small community will lead several generations later to children born to related parents. Children who are born to couples whose DNA code is similar, are at high risk of harm such as mental retardation, blindness, deafness and more. To create a sufficiently large genetic diversity in the spacecraft passenger community, a fairly large number of passengers will be needed - between two and five hundred people who will constitute the genetic minimum for the start of the journey.
Instead of sending such a large amount of settlers, which would be expensive and greatly complicate the project, it might be worth trying another possible solution - life extension. If in the future it will be possible to delay aging and extend human life span, we can send a very small group of astronauts and hope that the extensive experience they will acquire during their lifetime will help them meet the challenges of conquering a new world.
So far, scientists have not been able to discover the secret of longevity. Maybe it's a good thing: no one can guess what psychological phenomena and problems will emerge in someone who is three hundred years old. Whatever psychological problem there is, there is no doubt that the loneliness and isolation of a journey to the stars will only make it worse.
It might be worth considering the last solution I will talk about: 'embryo ship'. In an embryo ship, those who are sent on a journey are embryonic cells that have just been formed and the spark of life already exists within them. Fetal cells can be frozen for extended periods, a process that is now routinely performed, and a spacecraft can contain tens of thousands of tiny embryos and still be smaller than any truly manned spacecraft.
The technical challenges to realizing an embryo ship are clear: an artificial womb must be designed to raise the babies in when the time comes, and the spacecraft's robots will have to have good enough artificial intelligence to raise a human child, meet its needs, maintain its safety and educate it accordingly. On the other hand, the news in recent weeks has taught us that there are quite a few people here on Earth who are such bad parents that any Casio pocket calculator would do a better job.
Before we finish, one last point to think about. What will happen if after the passengers in the spaceship overcome all the obstacles, go through centuries of isolation and suffering, face almost impossible mechanical and medical problems and do the unbelievable... what will happen if when they finally reach the planet intended for settlement, they will discover... that they are not alone?
This article is taken from the show's script.Making history!', a bi-weekly podcast about the history of science and technology.
29 תגובות
1. "Do you like me talking like that? If not - then curb your tone of voice a little..."
Interesting, and speaking this way to other commenters on the site is fine for you I guess:
"Safkan, please stop spreading your stupidity. You have no idea what you're talking about.'
2. What are the quotes you brought related? All that is said in them is that the NDE she experienced occurred while there was still electrical activity in the brain, this does not at all contradict the fact that at the time the brain was emptied of blood and cooled, there was no such activity, and this is also emphasized in the section that opens the article.
3. "We have several memory mechanisms, and only one of them is based on a change of synaptic connections"
I remind you that the discussion on the subject began after you asked me in surprise and bewilderment how information can be stored in the brain without electrical activity? (and giving an example of a hard disk that "remembers" information even without power supply).
So of all the mechanisms you know in the brain, isn't it clear to you that the synapses are the main and central mechanism that allows us to remember things, even without electrical activity in the brain?
In the link I gave earlier it is explicitly stated that the electrical activity that was measured was *deep in the brain*, however in the cerebral cortex itself where all memories are stored there was no electrical activity. So according to your theory (no electrical activity - no memory) that person was supposed to forget everything similar to the RAM memory of a computer, and return to function like a day-old baby mentally after being brought back to life.
4. "I have a degree in computers from the Technion (what degree?) and a master's degree in the philosophy of science"
That means, bottom line, you don't have any official academic degree in the field of brain studies or brain research.
That means, bottom line, you don't have any official academic degree in the field of brain studies or brain research.
4. "I have a degree in computers from the Technion (what degree?) and a master's degree in the philosophy of science"
and return to functioning like a one-day-old baby mentally after being brought back to life.
In the link I gave earlier it is explicitly stated that the electrical activity that was measured was *deep in the brain*, however in the cerebral cortex itself where all memories are stored there was no electrical activity. So according to your theory (no electrical activity - no memory) that person was supposed to forget everything, similar to the RAM memory of a computer,
3. "We have several memory mechanisms, and only one of them is based on a change of synaptic connections"
I remind you that the discussion on the subject began after you asked me in surprise and bewilderment how information can be stored in the brain without electrical activity? (and giving an example of a hard disk that "remembers" information even without power supply).
So of all the mechanisms you know in the brain, isn't it clear to you that the synapses are the main and central mechanism that allows us to remember things, even without electrical activity in the brain?
3. "We have several memory mechanisms, and only one of them is based on a change of synaptic connections"
I remind you that the discussion on the subject began after you asked me in surprise and bewilderment how information can be stored in the brain without electrical activity? (and giving an example of a hard disk that "remembers" information even without power supply).
So of all the mechanisms you know in the brain, isn't it clear to you that the synapses are the main and central mechanism that allows us to remember things, even without electrical activity in the brain?
In the link I gave earlier it is explicitly stated that the electrical activity that was measured was *deep in the brain*, however in the cerebral cortex itself where all memories are stored there was no electrical activity. So according to your theory (no electrical activity - no memory) that person was supposed to forget everything similar to the RAM memory of a computer, and return to function like a day-old baby mentally after being brought back to life.
4. "I have a degree in computers from the Technion (what degree?) and a master's degree in the philosophy of science"
That means bottom line you don't have any official academic degree in the field of brain studies or brain research.
1. "Do you like me talking like that? If not - then curb your tone of voice a little..."
Interesting, and speaking this way to other commenters on the site is fine for you I guess:
"Safkan, please stop spreading your stupidity. You have no idea what you're talking about.'
2. What are the quotes you brought related? All that is said in them is that the NDE she experienced occurred while there was still electrical activity in the brain, this does not at all contradict the fact that at the time the brain was emptied of blood and cooled, there was no such activity, and this is also emphasized in the section that opens the article.
Eran:
You suggest us to think scientifically so you should apply it yourself!
First of all, if you want others to take your words seriously, you should read what they said before you - simply a matter of symmetry.
Would you be willing to go through a teleportation that breaks you down and builds a duplicate of you somewhere else? This is what the imputation does to elementary particles that already have and this question has already been presented in the previous responses.
Regarding the funny consideration of the mass, you simply show that you do not understand the theory of relativity: in the system of the spaceship it will actually appear as if the occupants of the spaceship have a completely normal mass and precisely the mass of the bodies it collides with has increased immeasurably.
First of all, the part about metal thieves and an apartment in Tel Aviv is really funny one day it will cost like this...but now for the repairs
1. And most importantly..cryogenic freezing like science fiction is already here...although at the moment it is at the level of eggs and sperm for fertilization..but the procedure includes rapid freezing in a method that I do not understand or find..how it does not damage the material in any way...I read this a month ago and was in shock ..Really Stargate...so it will probably progress faster from here...if it hasn't already progressed in experiments that are not visible to the public eye.
2. Regarding travel...well...only recently with telescopes and better software are they discovering that...we are not the only system that has orbiting stars and there are quite a few of them...add the legendary Drake equation and you will find that statistically within a radius of 10 light years around us...less Or more... there must be at least one culture at one stage or another of development... in addition to us of course... and yes it does not exist on Earth... tiny ones 🙂
3. Stop thinking non-linearly like humans.. after all, as readers of this site, we have a slightly more sophisticated brain... the shortest path from one place to another does not have to be a straight line... and this is where the quanta come in... after all, teleportation is a proven matter... there are experiments that have shown that it exists and is possible ....some of them are more or less numerous..the idea is that it is possible and one should invest in efforts to make it happen in things that are not only at a quantum size level. So if that's the case or the distortion of the space or whatever. It is possible to make the journey be immediate or shorten it significantly...
4.. Regarding traveling in space in a group of people.. yes.. there is no doubt that we are a destructive race .. and without a lot of sleep drugs they will probably kill each other in the end.. we have to take care of that somehow..
5. Regarding the asteroid in our way...hmmm...if for example there is the section of the speed of light and we accelerated to the speed our mass also became that big....and this is a question now..wouldn't we be destroyed in any case without harm to us because of this everything we come across??? After all, his mass will be zero relative to ours... an interesting question.
Food for thought: each of you is probably sitting on a chair while reading these lines. The chair exerts a force on you that is directed outward from the center of the earth, and its magnitude is equal to your mass multiplied by the acceleration g. That is, the chair gives you an acceleration of ten meters per second approximately every second, which offsets the acceleration that the Earth's gravity field gives you in the opposite direction (until the chair breaks and then...oops...wait half a second for the next pole to offset the acceleration of gravity).
Agree with me that it's not something you think about every day. It feels obvious. But now think - if it is possible to give a spaceship a constant acceleration of only one g (don't forget that in space there are no retarding forces or frictional forces), then assuming I didn't miss anything in the calculations, here are some points: 1) within 48 hours (as measured from Earth) the spaceship will reach For a speed of plus or minus 14% of the speed of light, which is approximately 151,200,000 km/h. At this speed, an additional single percent investment of the driving force will be required in order to maintain the magnitude of acceleration g.
2) Ten months will be required to accelerate a spacecraft to an enormous speed of 86% of the speed of light. At this speed, it will take twice as much force as we initially applied to maintain an acceleration of one g. A trip to the Centauri system, which is close to us at about 4.5 light years, where we will accelerate like this for ten months and then accelerate in the same way for ten months, will take about 5 years. And the spaceship passengers will take approximately two years only! A total of 10 years will pass from the moment of launch until the arrival of a soothing transmitter from the spacecraft that is located in the Centauri system.
Now admit that the above data provokes the thought - how to give an acceleration of g to the spaceship... in any case, nothing comes to my mind related to the fuel that the spaceship must carry. Rather, something along the lines of a device that is in orbit close to the sun and converts the energy it receives into a concentrated configuration like a laser aimed at If I'm not mistaken, attempts have already been made in this style for the propulsion idea of an elevator into space.
Tomer:
I actually got the message.
I just don't agree with him.
There is no need for you to conjure up Rashi.
Michael,
You managed to understand every word in my response without getting the message, but I have no desire or need to provide a Rashi interpretation.
Tomer:
I understand that you have never seen science fiction movies and that you thought that particle teleportation experiments are done just for fun and not with the goal of enabling the teleportation of large things as well.
I'm not saying it's impossible. Although it is completely unlikely, it is certainly possible that a person who knows about the particle experiments will not be able to understand why they are being done, but will be able to understand that it can develop into something serious that the stupid scientists did not think of.
Of course, the very existence of these experiments is a hint as thin as an elephant and that it is really difficult to think about the development of the matter into complex bodies.
When my children were just starting to learn to speak I would sometimes tell them a sentence like "One and one are two..." and they completed "two". Apparently they discovered the account themselves.
to Nimrod,
My plan is not to send people but genetic material and artificial sperm and this in order to save the number of conjugated electrons and this in order to save conjugated electrons.
The role of parent educators may be replaced with some degree of success with the help of holography and artificial intelligence software and hopefully, future generations will do a better job.
By the way, I thought of all the ideas I present here by myself
Including attributes of unreliability, not telling the whole truth, etc.
mainly indicates the character of the accuser.
This fact is scientifically known and is successfully used in conducting surveys by asking questions of the form 'Would you believe that your friend did such and such'.
Apart from that, it is not a gentlemanly act either.
On this note, I will agree with Michael, I also have no intention of being dismantled and then trying to put together a copy (perhaps accurate and perhaps not mine).
I don't think that teleportation of complex bodies is impossible (it's true that teleportation for photons to a distance of about a meter has already been done in laboratories) by the method of disassembly and reassembly, on the other hand, a wormhole is something that is still at the limit of logic.
Something about teleportation:
Of course Tomer is not the first to think of this and in fact it is likely that he did not think of it at all but saw it in some movie and then read about the efforts that scientists are making on this subject for this very purpose but that is not what is important.
What is important is that I would never be willing to go through this kind of teleportation even if it becomes possible one day (and provided for me).
why?
Because actually it is not about moving me to another place but eliminating me while building an identical copy of me in another place.
I have no intention of letting someone eliminate me even if they promise to produce someone just like me under me.
If one day it will be possible to do this without eliminating me then in fact it is about building a faithful copy of the original but not teleporting because I will still remain in the same place.
I might agree to go through such a process for the sake of science, but that's another matter.
wave:
I suggest you think about your words a little more.
The probes also need to be navigated - how will they do it? Answer - they will not - they will perish before they begin to bring benefit.
Suppose even that the probes manage to survive in some mysterious way and suppose that the spaceship needs a second's warning to avoid a collision. This means that the probe must move close to 300000 km before the spacecraft but we are talking about 300000 km in the axis system of the spacecraft and in this axis system, the entire distance between the spacecraft and the target may appear (depending on the speed) smaller than 300000 km.
In short, life is difficult and its difficulties should not be underestimated.
not that. Tomer
Yaffe demanded that you came up with an "unusual" idea, even if according to you it is not original.
I would like to add to yours, an unconventional but also not original idea of mine. The idea is to use the "quantum tunneling" phenomenon
which is made possible by creating a "wormhole" in space-time. This method may be the key to solving all the unsolvable problems in carrying out the task, as detailed in the previous responses. The problem - we just need to develop the technology, the idea is already here.
I was thinking of another engineering solution for space travel
And I may not be the first to think of that.
The idea makes use of quantum teleportation.
It is possible to send electrons that are part of conjugated electron pairs and when the space vehicle reaches the destination it will be possible to launch there in zero time everything required according to the amount of electrons sent.
The advantages of the offer are:
1. Flexibility in the content of deliveries.
2. Very modest storage space requirements.
3. The electrons can also be used for communication.
4. There is no need to support life throughout the journey.
The disadvantage is clear, you first need to learn how to perform quantum teleportation of complex objects.
The solution, of course, is to send small probes that will move at the same speed as the spacecraft and will be in front of it at a distance that will allow maneuvering.
No need to get caught up in the little details.
oh shame,
The writer's words are correct, while the spacecraft transmits the signal and will receive it back in its radar decoder plus the processing time on the computer which is relevant in the matter because it is also about plus or minus the speed of light, therefore assuming that the spacecraft is approaching the speed of light it will receive the information in time constants that will not allow it to perform Almost no maneuvering.
oh shame:
The shame, at this point, is not with the authors of the article.
Let's look at the events in two reference systems:
If someone is moving away from us in a certain direction at a speed close to the speed of light, then as we see things, the radar beam will really reach an object that is in that direction only slightly ahead of the spacecraft, so in our system the claim is correct.
What about the spacecraft's point of view?
From this point of view, the distance she has to travel to reach that object is almost zero because, as we know, the distances in the direction of movement are shrinking, and therefore also from her point of view, she will reach the object only a little after the radar signal has returned from it because she will reach it only a little after transmitting the signal.
In the most extreme case, if a spacecraft could move at exactly the speed of light, we would see that time stood still and she would see that the axis of space in the direction of its movement had collapsed to a point, therefore both according to our judgment and according to the judgment of the occupants of the spacecraft, the spacecraft clock would show the exact same time at all points in the spaceship's path and she was unable to escape due to a collision.
Quote from the "article":
"...radar cannot be used, for example, to discover dangerous asteroids, since the electromagnetic rays of the radar also travel at the speed of light. The spacecraft and the radar rays will meet the asteroid more or less at the same time..."
I wonder if the great scientist who wrote the article heard of
One of the two principles on which private relativity is based:
The speed of light is invariant in any frame of reference.
It is basically an invariant of nature.
Therefore, the mech waves will move away from the spacecraft at the speed of light and "will not meet with the asteroid at nearly the same time..."
shame!
Hello to Arya Seter,
Thank you for enlightening my eyes. However, I do not think that such a project is feasible, if only for the reason that the resources required to carry it out are not yet within our reach. By the way, you pointed out, rightly, that the approach to the speed of light will not affect the "passengers", but this is still an approach and not an arrival. Recently, a planet was discovered whose conditions are suitable for the conditions on Earth (581c) is 20.5 light years away and it also revolves around a red dwarf which, as I mentioned, is not suitable for us, if only for the reason that photosynthesis in the sense we are familiar with will not take place.
As for the scientific explanations "that I still have to learn", science has not yet reached a solution to the problems of gravity and the "unifying force". Many scientists tend to "believe" that dark energy and dark matter exist, and yet in November 2007, two Canadian astronomers: Prof. John Moffard, and Dr. Joel Brownstein, rejected the claim that the collision of the two galaxy clusters that became the "bullet" cluster "created a huge amount of "dark matter" and presented a "new theory of gravity" that rejects the claim of the creation of dark matter out of thin air. The theory of relativity grew after the scientists thought that Newton's laws were the complete scientific truth, and very quickly the theory of relativity came into conflict with the quantum theory. Einstein also tried to expand the laws of nature by defining a cosmological constant that was disproved with the discovery that the universe is expanding. Therefore, everything we learn is a limited guarantee until the next scientific theory (perhaps not in our term).
In any case, if the things I wrote contradict the perception of the scientific community, we (including the scholars among us) are still far from the end of the road of understanding the laws of nature, just like the distance between us and the "super-earth" planet that we (maybe) aspire to reach. In any case, accept my words as a fictional challenge to the point of scientific development where we are today. Thanks.
Yoram Tomer
Yoram Tomer
You should read and learn a lot more.
1. There is no problem for a living creature or an inanimate object to approach the speed of light. It won't affect them. The only problem is the amount of energy that must be invested to approach the speed of light. The passengers and the equipment will not feel anything, if the acceleration is not too great.
2. Planets were discovered in our galaxy which is about one hundred thousand light years across. No planets have been discovered at distances of millions of light years. The article offers several options to overcome the limited lifespan.
3. Five percent of the speed of light does not require energy, who knows what. Ways are now known how to achieve even 10 percent of the speed of light, without the spacecraft having to carry energy resources with it. This has nothing to do with escape velocity. In any case, the escape velocity from the earth or the solar system is not a problem.
4. There is no connection between the curvature of the universe and the risk of encountering stars or black holes. The navigated spaceship does not feel the curvature, and if you encounter something or not - it is not because of the curvature (by the way, it is also possible that the universe is flat and not curved). The distribution of stars and black holes in space is such that the chance of encountering them is zero and you can always stay away from them.
5. It is clear that we will be chosen to settle in Earth-like stars and not in others.
A script very similar to what you wrote at the end was shown a few months ago on the Discovery channel on television, except that there they took it another step further and talked about the fact that in a few tens (or hundreds) of years computer chips will be able to contain the full consciousness of a human being, and in fact much more than that, then there will be A spaceship can be sent on journeys in space without any biological materials, when it reaches a suitable planet it will be able to activate a team of robots that will create from the materials on the planet any biological entity (or silicon) that will be needed.
It seems to me that the article here also talks about similar ideas -
http://www.tapuz.co.il/blog/ViewEntry.asp?EntryId=1065939
The distances where there may be planets that can be inhabited by living beings cannot be reached and the reasons are:
1. Living matter has mass, so its travel speed must be much less than the speed of light.
2. So far, such planets have been discovered at distances of between tens and millions of light years. Therefore even if the flight will be at a reasonable speed of 5% of the speed of light. There is no (biological) chance for a living creature to survive that long.
3. 5% of the speed of light requires such an amount of energy to reach the escape velocity that is unattainable in the visible range.
4. The curvature of the universe will mean that the search for the target star may cause deviations from the flight path that the gravity of other stars or black holes will cause the extinction of the spaceship.
5. At least one planet discovered at a relatively short distance, revolves around a red dwarf and the process of photosynthesis in our understanding is impossible.
Finally, I wrote a fictional script (totally farfetched) that could be developed into a science fiction book, about the possibility of sending frozen DNA and thawing it on the target planet and causing the development of life if and when it reaches the target planet. It must be remembered that living beings in our concepts also need vegetation to exist and that Her DNA must be frozen, thawed and grown in the soil of the target star and possibly without photosynthesis.
In short: "Dreams in Asfamia".
Those who wish to address these matters, I would appreciate it if they would call by email to ytomer@bezeqint.net
I would like to add that not only the magnetic field protects the Earth from cosmic rays, but also the solar wind. And we do not know what the "weather" is like in space outside the solar system in areas where the solar wind does not reach.